The Soul in the Clothes
by Allekha
Summary: Teenage Yuuri is fascinated when photos of his idol Victor in women's underclothes leak to the press. It only gets worse when Victor is asked about them in an interview and isn't ashamed of them at all. (Pre-canon, onesided Yuuri/Victor, genderqueer!Victor)


A/N: Written for this prompt:  
We've seen Yuuri in lingerie quite a bit, but what about Viktor?  
Young Yuuri is destroyed in the best possible way when photos of teenaged, long-haired Viktor wearing lingerie are leaked to the public. Viktor (being Viktor) is not phased by the leak at all and decides to publicly own his gender-fluidity, which only turns Yuuri on more.

I thought this was an interesting idea, especially given some of the things that YoI does with gender/expression, even if those things can be hard to capture from an outside POV. (Since clothes aren't gender but can be used to express gender but some people just like crossdressing and - well, we all know it's complicated.) Hopefully I succeeded somewhat.

* * *

Camped out in a corner of the family room – the only place to get ethernet access for his laptop – Yuuri was supposed to be working on schoolwork.

What he was actually doing was looking up skating articles. In English, so if he got caught, he could even claim that he was practicing. Which he was. (And also he'd exhausted the latest news in Japanese already.)

This particular site, Yuuri was pretty sure, was more gossip than real news, but it also had a lot of pictures attached to the articles, so even if he couldn't understand them, he could look. And here was a big headline – Yuuri couldn't read all of the words, but he knew 'Victor Nikiforov' and 'photos', so of course he had to click.

There was some text at the top, but Yuuri wanted to see the pictures first, so he scrolled down.

On seeing them, his first instinct was to stop looking. He frantically tried to find the back button, but didn't manage it before, just seconds later, his dad called him for dinner. Yuuri slammed the laptop shut, took it up to his room, and tried not to blush through all of dinner, because those hadn't been normal pictures. He definitely, _definitely_ couldn't explain those away as English practice.

But they had been of Victor, all right, so back in his room, with the lights off and tucked under his covers, Yuuri opened his laptop again. With nobody else around, his family thinking him asleep, he let himself look.

They were photos of Victor in very fancy underwear. Very fancy underwear that, as far as Yuuri knew, was usually worn by women. But none of it looked strange on Victor at all; it looked like it had been made for him, the same way that clothes in the shoots that ended up in Yuuri's magazines looked. But these photos weren't brightly-lit and polished; they were dark and shadowy and grainy at the edges.

None of the grain could make Victor look bad, however. In the first, he was just sitting back on a bed, the photo taken at an angle. Victor smiled at the camera, or whoever was behind it, his eyes the brightest thing in the picture. The way his back was arched, though, drew all of Yuuri's attention to the black lace... shirt? It was like a short, strappy shirt, fitting tightly across Victor's thin waist, and with nothing to it _but_ the lace so that when Yuuri stared enough (he couldn't help himself) he could see hints of pink nipples beneath. And underneath that, he wore matching panties in the same fabric, though no matter how much Yuuri stared at _those_ , that was all he saw.

And that was it. Black lace and pale skin. There were bruises on his legs that the shadows couldn't quite hide, signs that he'd been practicing hard at the rink, but Yuuri only saw them because he went looking.

Yuuri swallowed, feeling both uncomfortable and fascinated. He scrolled down.

In the next one, Victor was laying back on the bed, arms thrown artfully above his head, beautiful hair spread out beneath him. He was still smiling at the camera, more invitingly this time. He was wearing – Yuuri didn't even know what it was, a couple of triangles of fabric attached to a longer cascade, like a short dress that was split and ruffly up the middle. The fabric was pale blue, translucent, and Yuuri couldn't decide where to look: at Victor's neck and collar, lovely and framed by the top; his chest, almost covered but not actually, such that Yuuri could see everything through a haze of blue; his stomach, where the fabric spilled open over the muscles.

Beautiful and strong. That was Victor.

This time, below the top, he was wearing some kind of shorts with more ruffles and a big ribbon bow on top. To Yuuri's disappointment, they weren't also translucent, but the fabric was thin enough to see that he was – that he was enjoying himself. Of course he was. He looked so pretty. Whoever had taken the photos couldn't have been able to look away any more than Yuuri was. Must have eventually set the camera aside to give Victor all the attention he deserved.

Yuuri shifted under his blanket, then gave up on any attempt at feeling virtuous. He slipped his hand down his pajamas, gasped at the first touch, then after a minute of looking, wriggled his other hand out so he could scroll down and see the next photo.

Another loose, short dress thing, brushing Victor's thighs. Lace, again, but on a transparent background, like Victor just had pieces of fancy lace drifting across his body where the fabric floated above it. One hand lay curled softly on his sternum, while the other played with the hem of the top right beside where it covered his slim black underwear, right where his legs were slightly parted.

And below his hand, leaving just the barest gap of uncovered skin, was more lace clinging to Victor's legs. That had to be high socks of some kind, and Yuuri only tore his eyes from them, from the lace and the muscles of Victor's thighs and that thin stripe of uncovered skin, to look at Victor's face again.

In this photo, his eyes were darker. They were half-closed. His smile was still there, but tilted, and his entire expression was focused. Trying to draw someone in. As though he had to try.

His face was captivating. Yuuri's hand slowed, and for a moment, he wanted to reach out and touch him. It was almost like Victor was looking right at him through the screen.

It was too much. Yuuri shoved his laptop aside and turned his face into his pillow, rolling his hips into his hand. He could still see every detail of the picture behind his eyelids. He wanted – he wanted to untie the little ribbons keeping Victor's top on at the shoulders, wanted to touch his chest and hip bones through that lacy fabric, wanted to sneak his fingers between the socks and Victor's skating bruises and peel them down, wanted Victor's _eyes_ —

He bit into his pillow as he came. He had to let it go to catch his breath, panting like he'd just finished a performance. It was kind of weird to think of Victor when doing this – though this wasn't quite the first time – but it had felt so good. Even without those particular pictures, Yuuri had never seen anyone who gave him the same fluttery excited feeling when he watched them. (Except Yuu-chan sometimes, but that was different.)

And Victor looked very, very nice in the photos. Yuuri hastily dragged his laptop back over. There were more pictures, but for now he didn't look; he saved the entire webpage to a folder with an innocuous name and deleted the page from his browser history.

It wasn't until nearly a week later – after having seen the other photos, too – that Yuuri took out his dictionary and looked up the words he didn't know to see where the pictures had actually come from. And oh, there was a reason the quality was so low. 'Leaked' in the headline meant that someone had put them out there on purpose. Yuuri felt kind of sad when he was finished reading the short article; Victor had taken these pictures for, or probably with, someone special to him. He hadn't taken them for the whole world to see. Yuuri felt guilt whenever he looked at them, knowing that he should delete them.

But a lot of other people had seen them, too, not just Yuuri, and Victor didn't know, and he looked so handsome in them. That didn't help the guilt, but Yuuri couldn't bring himself to get rid of them. Or to stop looking at them every couple of nights, Victor in all those pretty things, staring so hard at the camera.

And then came the magazine interview.

When the magazine arrived in the mail on a Saturday, Yuuri took one look at the cover and raced with it up to his room, eager to read it before he shared it with Yuu-chan, though they often read the articles together. The cover showed a smiling Victor, his hair done in two frizzy braids tied off with ribbons, black nail polish just visible on the hand tucked under his chin. The big text on one side of his face promised an exclusive interview.

Yuuri flopped on his bed and hastily went through the pages until he found it. The headline image showed Victor, looking cheerful, in a well-fitting button-up and a pair of dark trousers, sitting in a chair with a cup of tea. He looked so _elegant_. Yuuri wished he could look like that. He was always a bit too pudgy, too round-faced, his clothes off the rack and not tailored like Victor's probably were.

He started to read. The first part wasn't particularly interesting, but then the interviewer asked about the pictures, and, oh.

V: Well, it's a shame about how they came out, but I can't say I regret that they did very much.  
I: They were quite startling photos, weren't they?  
V: But I looked good in them, right? (laugh) While I wish that they hadn't been posted without my permission, if I'd been asked, I think I probably would have given it.  
I: That's not something most people would be able to say!  
V: The person who took them is an ex-lover of mine, so perhaps it wouldn't have seemed malicious if he had asked. I thought we had a mutual and fairly good break-up – as far as those go – but apparently he was still quite upset and decided that he wanted to embarrass me. It didn't work.  
I: You don't find them embarrassing?  
V: I don't! Just because it's women's clothes or women's underwear – I don't think that matters. I like wearing beautiful things whether they're meant for men or women, and I don't think people should have to feel limited by things like gender when they're choosing clothes. Wearing clothes you like feels nice, so as long as you look good, isn't that the important part? At the time the pictures were taken, I wanted to do something special with my lover, and women's clothes felt natural on me. I'm not embarrassed about that at all.  
I: Now one wonders what would embarrass you to have leaked.  
V: (laugh) Well, there were other photos... but there have been some rather serious talks with the person who leaked the pictures, so I'm afraid the fans will have to use their imagination for now!  
I: I see. Regarding your appearance, you've received comments in the past about appearing feminine.  
V: Really, in general I don't want to feel constrained to only being 'male'. Some days, it feels more natural to think of myself as 'female', or as something in-between, and also when I'm playing certain roles. But it's not that I don't like being a man part of the time, too, or dressing in men's clothes. I really like wearing a good suit, for example, and the way they make me look. But I also like having long hair, even though nowadays that's considered something for women, and sometimes wearing feminine clothing to express myself. It doesn't have to be all one or the other, I think.  
I: For example, that costume you wore for your 'Lilac Fairy' performance in your last year of Juniors...  
V: Yes, that was explicitly designed to have both male and female elements, so it's a good example! I think it would be nice if I could push things even further in another costume in the future. There are a couple of now-retired skaters who had some really interesting costumes like that, for example...

The interview went on, but that was the section Yuuri returned to as soon as he finished it. He didn't think he was ready to call Yuu-chan and share this with her just yet.

Victor's confidence was amazing. No wonder he never looked nervous at competitions, even on the odd occasion where he messed up a jump or something. Yuuri had always wanted that kind of self-assurance, at least enough to keep him from falling apart when he made a mistake, and he was better than he'd been when he was younger, but he was pretty sure he'd never match Victor's serenity. Not _now_ , anyway, with Victor blithely admitting that he didn't care if the whole internet saw him in fancy women's underclothes. How did he do it? (And also, Yuuri suddenly felt relieved of the guilt from keeping the pictures on his hard drive, if even Victor didn't care.)

There was another picture included, too, setting Victor in soft white lighting. The image on the cover was obviously a close-up of this one – there were the cute braids again, the same smile, but the full version showed that he was wearing a simple black skirt. Yuuri kept looking between the two images. He wasn't sure he quite understood what Victor had said about being male sometimes and female other times, but he looked wonderful in both images.

He couldn't help but wonder, if Victor pulled up that black skirt, would there be matching lacy underclothes beneath it like in the other pictures? If he liked wearing it and already had it... or maybe he would only have on ordinary underwear, and it was the other Victor who could unbutton his shirt to show off silk beneath it. He'd said in the interview that it didn't have to be all one or the other...

Yuuri couldn't stop thinking about it. His hand started to slip beneath his pants before he noticed where it was going.

It was just – Victor hadn't just brushed off the pictures coming out, rather than hiding in a hole for the rest of his life like Yuuri would have done. He'd then said all those things and let the magazine publish more photos of him cross-dressing – or not cross-dressing, exactly, but becoming a girl in some way, if not physically? It was confusing but also courageous, and it made Yuuri admire him even more, and also it was somehow really hot.

Yuuri could feel himself flushing. But he was alone with his thoughts, so he didn't stop. He shifted into a better position, shivered as he stroked himself. Looked at the photos. Thought about the black costume that he knew every detail of, how enchanting Victor had looked skating in it. Thought about the fluffy, glittery white costume that was Yuu-chan's favorite. Thought about the one that had looked a lot like an old-fashioned suit, where in the interviews and close-ups, Victor had clearly been wearing sharp-cornered eyeliner.

Victor could be whoever he wanted to be on the ice. He'd played dancing angels, fairies pulled from ballets, princes straight out of fairy tales. So maybe it kind of made sense that even off the ice, he could be a girl, if he wanted to. He certainly looked pretty in the magazine picture, more comfortable in a skirt than Mari was.

Whatever he was, Victor would still be Victor. Victor with his lovely, wide eyes, his sharp cheekbones, all his sleek muscle that let him skate so beautifully.

Yuuri pushed the magazine away and shut his eyes. For a moment, he simply lay there, touching himself gently. Then his imagination started to get away from him: Victor, leading someone (it couldn't be Yuuri, but that didn't matter, he focused on Victor instead) to a bed. Smiling and asking whoever it was if they wanted him to be a man or a woman tonight. Or maybe Victor wouldn't ask, he would just tell them, undoing his buttons to show off everything beneath them, maybe sinking into a girlish pose for this particular evening...

Yuuri whimpered, pushed his face into the mattress. Stroked harder and faster, not really able to hold onto images any more, until he came into his hand.

When he'd cleaned up and put himself back together, he immediately went to re-read the interview again. Yuu-chan would demand to see it if he didn't show her today, and he knew she'd want to talk about it, but he wasn't sure he could get through a conversation like that without his whole face burning. It was still hot to the touch.

Maybe he should go finish his chores before taking it to her place. Maybe by then, he could talk about it with a straight face, and they could chatter about Victor and go copy his routines at Ice Castle for a while like they normally did.

Yuuri hesitantly closed the page on the two Victors, placed the magazine safely on his desk, and went downstairs, but chores didn't take his mind off the interview in the least.


End file.
